Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Assignment 2 - Common Theme

Students  are taking this class because they want to understand and learn how we interact with this new media, and how this interaction will eventually affect our lives[1]. They want to understand the dynamics of this relationship[2]. Do we control the media or does it control us? Ms. Christine Woods used a stronger word "manipulate" in place of control[3]. Students are also taking this class because of their love for both the technology and the artistic aspect of the technology. They see something beautiful in the new media because of their affinity for beautiful and colorful things[4].

Majority of the male students in this class love video games whether it is Xbox, PlayStation, or Nintendo, or whether it's played on a PC or a cell phone, and, I assume this is one of the main attractions to taking this class. Video gaming is a large part of the new media and I am not surprised that this class is taken by students who might be interested  in understanding where we are headed with the current media[5].

There is also a common theme in the use of media. In particular, most students mentioned using social media for a lot of their interaction with other people. Facebook, Twitter and Instagram have been mentioned a lot.  The use of cell phones is also common among students for every facet of their communication, social interaction, and entertainment. Some of the most common apps that they use include WeChat, SnapChat, Skype, Whatsapp, and Reddit. For videos, the most common media is Youtube. For Radio, the most common media is Pandora and Spotify. For email communication, nearly everyone in the class use gmail, and maybe yahoo.

Even though the new media has pervaded most of our lives, it seems computers have not completely taken over our lives, as nearly everyone still uses the traditional television for watching television shows and movies. Although, NetFlix might be consider a new media, it is still coupled tightly with television for delivery. I noticed everyone's love for comedy and action movies. But there is one media that everyone uses on a regular basis from getting in touch with people to playing games - a cell phone.


References:
[1] Sara Fox, Cullen Brown, Jingyuan Zhang, Te-Yang Chen, Thomas Coladonato, Austin Dalton, Longhua You, Sung Jun Lim
[2] Joane Bruno
[3] Christine Woods,
[4] Xu Zeng, Elliott Fawcett, Matthew Koucmoud
[5] Matt Dillard, Cullen Brown, Thomas Coladonato, Austin Dalton, Eliott Fawcett, Odair Fernandes, Joshua Sheehy, John Nowotny, Justin Montalvo, Patrick Knauth

Saturday, January 18, 2014

Computers And New Media Assignment 1 Part II: A List of Media That I Use Every Week




  • Cellphone
  • Radio
    • Sports Talk 
      • Traditional Radio
        • TexaAgs Radio - KZNE AM 1150
        • Sports Radio 1310 The Ticket - Dallas
      • Android Phone - TuneIn App
        • TexAgs Radio - KNZE 1150
        • Alabam Sports Radio
        • ESPN Radio
    • Music
      • Android Phone - TuneIn App
        • NRJ France - Top 40
        • BestRadio  France - Top 40
        • UK Top Charts 
  • Videos
    • Youtube
      • National Geographic
      • Roman History
      • Religion
      • UFO
      • Web Design
      • Texas A&M
      • Johnny Manziel
      • Bodybuilding
  • News
    • CNN
    • Sports Illustrated
    • ESPN
    • Yahoo Sports
  • Email
    • TAMU
    • Yahoo
    • Gmail


Computers and New Media - Assignment 1 Part I -- Why Am I Taking This Class?

It started out as a seemingly innocent network of computers in the early 1990's, a time when I marveled at the sight of my friend typing real-time on my computer screen at Ohio University. While he was in at Cal Poly. I marveled at that wonderful program called Mosaic that displayed some information about important organizations or important people. They were Important. After all, I could read about them. And learn about them while I was at school. I started my undergrad in computer science in 1992. The year before that, I only learned about important and famous people in printed materials, on television, maybe radio.

My, how things changed in just twenty years. About the same time, Don Norman, in his famous book The Design of Everyday Things, mentioned about a homework he gave to his students in one of the courses he taught - how would you design a product that combines AM-FM radio, Cassette player, CD players, Telephone, Telephone answering machine, Clock, Alarm clock (the alarm can turn on a tone, radio, cassette, or CD), Desk or bed lamp)? Seriously, what kind of a design could I have come up with during that time? Would I have thought that the paradigm of everything I knew about delivering music and phone messages would be close to what we have them now?

I took this class because I want to find out the path that we took from two decades ago to the present. I would like to find out if a necessity for a new type of system could be predicted. I would like to find out if there was a vision for this new media. Or did we just get lucky that all the different pieces of the puzzle simply fell in the right places?